Thu Feb 13, 2020, 06:59 PM
Newest Reality (12,712 posts)
Modern technology is akin to the metaphysics of Vedanta [View all]
I am posting this under philosophy because it rests in what is a rather grey zone in regards to the polarized and political, extreme views regarding science, technology, metaphysics and religion. In a sense, beyond Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen, Bon and similar disciplines, do not fit neatly in a typical western's idea of religion since the categories we now use were not divided in the same way we do that, but that is a historical matter. The Vedas relate information on a variety of topics, for instance.
Not that I am appealing to authority, but Sam Harris is rather positive about Dzogchen, for example, and if you read his books, he makes some good points about its difference from Western projection of theology as a matter of fact in all such matters. There is plenty of information about the kind of skepticism he has utilized in his approach to those subjects. From there we can wonder if Westerners consider the investigation of the mind/reality a primarily religious perspective from a presupposition, or will it require a better understanding of what is being considered prior to forming biased conclusions about it. We will see. We see stereotypes abound, confirmation biases rule, and polarization intrudes. Considering the nature of the "hard problem" itself, (concerning consciousness) and ancient interests in subjects like awareness, consciousness, mind and reality, we might gain some insights into the matter from that form of often formal, (for its time) investigation and commentary. Since awareness/consciousness requires a radical, subjective empiricism in that sense, (in contrast to a physicalism that relies on a metaphysical realism) we can at least consider that the problem, in some ancient disciplines, has been around for a long time and interest in it has been perennial, at least in the West, but interesting is growing for their psychological and ontological relevance to our current quest into the nature of consciousness itself. Akhandadhi Das is a Vedanta philosopher and Vaishnava Hindu theologian. He is director of Buckland Hall, a conference and retreat centre in Wales, a member of the Science and Philosophy Initiative, and a broadcaster and advisor to the BBC on Indian philosophical and spiritual traditions. You might think that digital technologies, often considered a product of ‘the West’, would hasten the divergence of Eastern and Western philosophies. But within the study of Vedanta, an ancient Indian school of thought, I see the opposite effect at work. Thanks to our growing familiarity with computing, virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), ‘modern’ societies are now better placed than ever to grasp the insights of this tradition. https://aeon.co/ideas/modern-technology-is-akin-to-the-metaphysics-of-vedanta
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